r/JewsOfConscience • u/ContentChecker Jewish Anti-Zionist • Oct 27 '24

Discussion Cultural exchange with /r/Arabs!

Hi everyone,

Today we will be having a cultural exchange with r/Arabs - beginning at 8AM EST, but extending for about 2 days so feel free to post your questions/comments over the course of that time-frame.

The exchange will work similarly to an AMA, except users from their sub will be asking us questions in this thread for anyone to answer, and users from our sub can go to a thread there to ask questions and get answers from their users!

To participate in the exchange, see the following thread in /r/Arabs:

https://old.reddit.com/r/arabs/comments/1gd9eb3/cultural_exchange_rjewsofconscience/

Big thanks to the mods over at /r/Arabs for reaching out to us with this awesome idea! Thanks to MoC for posting the original post.

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u/endingcolonialism Oct 27 '24

How do you feel about 1) armed resistance in general? 2) October 7 in general?

9

u/PlinyToTrajan Non-Jewish Ally (Jewish ancestry & relatives) Oct 27 '24

The Palestinians are in an impossible situation.

The state of U.S. discourse doesn't allow me to talk about armed resistance as openly as I'd like to.

I understood why the Palestinians assaulted a lot of Israeli military and police installations with indigenous weapons and tactics.  I only oppose the aspects of their attack that involved assaulting civilians, and while those certainly did occur Israel has exaggerated them with its atrocity propaganda.  

Something written in the June, 2024 Wall Street Journal exclusive about Sinwar's private messages has stayed with me. "'Things went out of control,' Sinwar said in one of his messages, referring to gangs taking civilian women and children as hostages. 'People got caught up in this, and that should not have happened.'" Wall Street Journal, Jun. 10, 2024, "Gaza Chief’s Brutal Calculation: Civilian Bloodshed Will Help Hamas."

What happened on October 7th is more complicated than the standard, Western account, and it's amazing to me that people can read that Wall Street Journal article and take nothing away from it but the one-dimensional message reflected in its headline.

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u/Saul_the_Raccoon Conservadox & Marxist Oct 27 '24

There's also the Drop Site interview with Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi of Palestinian Islamic Jihad who makes the very good point -- generally corroborated by recent history -- that the less than discriminate use of violence by the Palestinian Resistance has been a consequence of the weapons they've had at hand, and not their intentions. That if they had the GPS-guided bombs that the Israelis do, they'd be attacking the IDF directly.